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Video distributor Crunchyroll wants to bring anime and other Asian content to a wide range of connected TVs and other platforms. Which explains why it’s announcing today that it’s acquired video discovery startup Redux to help improve its user experience on those platforms.

Since 2007, Redux has been focused on helping online video viewers to discover new streaming video content. While that started on the web, over the years, it has increasingly focused on the smart TV market.

Crunchyroll, which sold a majority stake to The Chernin Group late last year, has been working to get its streaming video app embedded on more and more devices. The service has more than 25,000 episodes of licensed content from Asian content producers, and has rolled out apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle, PS3, PS4, Xbox LIVE, AppleTV, Roku, and various Internet-enabled TVs and set-top boxes.

Adding the Redux team will help Crunchyroll to improve discovery on its video apps, helping anime fans to search for and find new videos and series that might appeal to them. As its library of content grows, as well as its number of viewers, that will become more important.

The Redux team will also be focused on helping Crunchyroll to iterate on its lean-back viewing experience, as well as working on some of its connected device apps. Since Redux was already on a number of the same platforms, the Redux team should fit right in.

One member of Redux that won’t be joining Crunchyroll is founder David McIntosh. Last summer, McIntosh launched a new product called Riffsy as part of Redux. But the product was spun out as its own company early this year and has a whole different team behind it.

Riffsy has raised less than $1 million in funding from seed stage investor Initial Capital. Prior to acquisition, Redux had raised $8 million from investors that include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Alsop Louie Partners, and Peter Thiel.

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Crunchbase

OverviewCrunchyroll is a global video service for Japanese Anime and Asian media.
Crunchyroll has over 20,000 videos and 10,000 hours of Anime, Korean Drama and Live-Action titles on Crunchyroll.com and Crunchyroll-powered platforms including iPhone, iPad, Android, TV set-top boxes, Playstation®3, Xbox LIVE, and other devices.
With offices in San Francisco, Calif. and Tokyo, Japan, Crunchyroll is funded …